The government has also been beset by a series of multibillion-dollar corruption scandals involving licensing of industries like mining and telecommunications, which has helped to make Mr. Modi seem like an acceptable option.
"This extends the office to the field," said Paul J. Cosgrave, the commissioner of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, which has overseen the construction of the network.
Similarly, the fall in the cost of cross-border transportation and international cost of telecommunications, which had contributed so much to trade, would also have met its limit.
Matthew Ball, an analyst at Canalys, a telecommunications research firm in Reading, England, said Alcatel-Lucent was feeling pressure from a round of consolidation in the United States telecommunications industry, which has increased pressure on equipment makers to lower their prices.
Liberty also spent about $1 billion for 41percentt of Teligent, the telecommunications company, which has also filed for bankruptcy protection.
His mother works for Zurich, a Swiss insurance company, and his father for Sprint Nextel, the telecommunications company, which has its headquarters in Overland Park.
But RHK now estimates that total worldwide capital spending on telecommunications equipment, which has fallen 29percentt since 2000, will slip further -- to $190 billion in 2003, from $199 billion this year.
A similar AT&T ad ran July 1 in response to the general turmoil in the telecommunications industry, which has affected not just WorldCom but also Global Crossing and Qwest Communications, Mr. Morgenstern said.
The telecommunications company, which has been dogged by a string of recent network failures, confirmed that most of the problems were in Victoria and Tasmania.
C1 WorldCom's downfall is swelling the exodus of workers from the telecommunications industry, which has accounted for more than one of every 10 jobs lost since March 2001.
The layoffs represent the latest job cuts in the telecommunications industry, which has become increasingly competitive as companies vie for orders from the likes of Vodafone and China Mobile as they upgrade their data network infrastructure.
